How Do The Words That Others Say To Us Influence Us?

Since the human being is born, he or she is built into a subject of language, thanks to the words that his parents and family provide him with Learn to name things and people. Also, little by little, himself.

It incorporates phrases that will shape the world around you, those that teach you how to react, how to manage emotions, how to get what you want, how to describe and describe yourself; In short, they give you tools to position yourself. The influence of the first five years is decisive.

Those repertoire-words will be the ones with which he goes out into the world. They will leave a mark. Furthermore, he incorporates them, repeats them and even on occasions, takes advantage of them.

Labels become flesh, they become empowering beliefs, but many times they also restrict An exercise that can be easily done is to pay attention to the fillers used in everyday life and reflect on them. Even the ones we don’t say in public, to everyone; the ones we say in front of the mirror. It is believed that they are just that: “set phrases” but by repeating them so much, they establish the action.

Language and its participation in how we see ourselves

You often hear: “Carlos is very nice”, “María is very docile”, “Alberto is just like his father”, “Ana is very stubborn”. Some of these phrases can sometimes be flattering and almost flattering, and others the opposite. What they all do is establish a stereotype, mark a character, a role ; They are establishing a scope of movement, some borders.

Words have enormous power and yet, the subject is not fully aware of that. They impact him and will make him build, from them (the subjectivity with which he endows them) his reality. Because Words are loaded with a peculiar meaning: the one that each human being attributes to them Each word has a weight, a smell, a color, a temperature, a quality, an emotion. That is why “being happy” is not the same for some as it is for others.

The good thing is that this can be modified, you can work on expanding the connotation of the words or giving them multiple meanings, depending on the time, the place, the conversation.

Going beyond labels

The assumption of roles (the nice one, the docile one, the stubborn one, the one just like the father) can continue into adult life and prevent satisfactory development in some areas and relationships

Following what has been said so literally is a way of anchoring oneself in a past that probably no longer works (because it is outdated). In many cases, the permanence in these roles is due to a misunderstood loyalty, a loyalty to whoever said that phrase To be what was expected of that subject.

There is a tendency (unconscious) to remain faithful to what was, waiting for recognition from someone. The question that the patient should ask himself is if this is necessary, if it is useful in his current life. It’s about thinking about who you are acting for and what you are looking for with that act.

Children’s content will be known in the analysis. It will be in that space where we investigate the unconscious vestige of those ready-made phrases, how they are working, how they position the subject, etc. Because the time of the unconscious is different from chronological time, there may be situations in which we psychically relive our childhood, and one of those phrases conditions the present for us. We must work to transform that, to construct new phrases that inhabit the present and deactivate, transmute those.
From those childhood constructions, psychic impediments can arise, ways (that do not prosper) of solving some problems, scenes that repeat themselves without (apparently) finding an explanation, limitations, fears, contradictions… all of this is giving us clues. When it has not been possible to put words to them, when these desires have not been transformed, they will transform into obsessions, into pathology.

There is enjoyment in everything, even in the symptom The symptom comes to show what has not been able to be displayed in another healthier way, which has not been able to be put into words. It is a way of telling the patient’s story without him realizing it, because the unconscious only needs/desires to manifest itself, it wants to make concrete what has been repressed, and when it cannot do so in a linear way (because it would be extremely unpleasant for consciousness), it it is disguised, scrambled, distorted.

Psychoanalysis is a very useful instrument that uses listening to detect what those limiting phrases and beliefs are, which is open to listening to what is repeated in the subject, indicating what he or she does not even perceive from consciousness.

Through interpretation, new chains of signifiers will be built that will deactivate old/current beliefs by providing them with other perspectives, understanding them in a richer and broader way, appreciating how this phenomenon can be thought, learning to tolerate that this is part of the past and that what is important is what is to come.

In the analytical process the patient will be the one who does the work of constructing the new words. These are transformed, they are changed, allowing at the same time others – more appropriate, more in line with the subject and its time – to reconstruct the subject.